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Saturday, July 6, 2013

Feeling terribly scattered...

I have made the decision that my next school year will be a lot like my previous couple, I will be making big changes... (the kids joke that if you have me again next year, things will be different)

I need to make the switch to a Standards Based Grading system. I know that this will allow me to more easily track where a student's deficiencies lie and hopefully inspire the students to work on specific topics on which they are struggling. I also am trying to build in a means of having students work for deeper understanding and for retention (and of topics, not the student). I will be doing this in a school where I will be the only teacher making this change, so besides having to prove the idea to my students I will also be under the watchful eyes of many others.

I need to start my class with a prescriptive assessment. We've done similar things before, but I am carefully creating a new test with certain topics in mind. My thought is that when I go to the Dr.'s that I fully expect him to run tests, make a diagnosis and then start a course of action to deal with my particular ailment(s). I certainly wouldn't want to b treated for diabetes, just because most of his patients need such treatment.

We are getting Ipads for the math department (due to a race to the top grant we were awarded by the state just before we ended our monitoring... We were a "failing" school, and managed to remove ourselves from the failing schools list... Sadly, as far as I'm aware, we're the only secondary school in the state to accomplish this). I'm sure the ipads will pose their own issues, and I do have some ideas on how to integrate them, but that will have to wait until I see if we get them immediately and how much influence we have on what apps are available to be put onto them.

I also am planning on starting to develop and use an interactive notebook system in my Algebra 2 classes. (well, the non-honors classes to start) We have our CCSS curriculum pretty much ready, I will just be creating the notebook around that format. This means the first topic my students will see in their notebooks will be Univariate Data Analysis.

To this end, I have started working on this first unit. Skipping the table of contents, grade analysis sheets, standards list (with A and B standards identified and written in student friendly language) and my expectations pages (most of which I have already created as well). My students will see a 4-door mean/median/mode/range foldable, 4 flap foldable on creating box and whisker plots, s sheet showing how to find standard deviation using a table, a page on finding measures of central tendency with the NSpire, a page on Normal Distribution and the Empirical Rule, a page on skew and z-scores. I've made homework assignments for many of these days, all with A and B problems (total of 4-6 per topic) My Normal Distribution and Empirical Rule page includes a QR link to an online Plinko simulator (this seems like a natural time to introduce the Ipads to the students). AFter these notebook days I have 2-3 data collection and analysis activities planned, one of which I know works well to discuss and illustrate Normal Distribution.

I have decided that practice with many of these topics in class will be done in pairs and/or with stations. I am half wondering if I should give a quiz to the students the day the NSpires are handed out, but before the calculator work so that I can assess how they find M/M/M/R and SD by hand, but as this is a B level standard, I don't know if its worthwhile.

I guess the questions I'm still wrestling with are: 1. how do you decide when to assess students on different standards? 2. Do you have students include practice in the interactive notebook? 3. Because its possible in my school for a student to have 3 different teachers, one each trimester, for the same course, how do I deal with students who only start to have me 2nd or 3rd trimester with regard to the INB? (I know that I will be relying heavily on the students who had me the previous trimester to help the newbies).

I snipped and stole "borrowed" heavily for some of the other pages (and some are just very simplistic) but I'll share the Standard Deviation table page. If anyone wants to see more, just let me know.

1 comment:

So intrigued! I have many questions and would love to open a dialogue with you. Should I share a google doc that contains them so we can have a conversation? Otherwise ill start listing them in the comment stream as I have the time! Great narrative ... thank you for sharing